


CAUTION: Broken Pieces May Be Sharp

by LuckyOwlsFoot



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 02:52:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8693563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyOwlsFoot/pseuds/LuckyOwlsFoot
Summary: Agent Washington begins to put the pieces of his mind back together after Epsilon's implantation. Memories are a dangerous thing, but some can be useful.





	

Breathe.

 

 Good, again.

 

 Good. Keep breathing. Everything else can wait, just keep breathing. You’re alive. You are alive and breathing, let’s keep it that way. Start picking up the shattered pieces as you go. Remember. Your name is David,

> (Your name is Epsilon, and today is your birthday)

> ( _Haaaappy birthday to you_ )

STOP.

 

Breathe. _Breathe_ damn it. Forget. Forget, forget, forget – Don’t Remember; memory is what killed you in the first place.

 

You’re dead. Breathe.

 

 If you’re dead, then why does it hurt? Why are there shards of broken glass piercing through the inside of your skull, why does your heart ache like there’s a hole in it?

 

Right, they took her. She left, then they took her, then they killed you. Stop. Careful. You’re walking on broken glass. Don’t think about her. Don’t remember.

 

> (Hey David)

> (Hey Leo-nerd)

 

Stop. Names are dangerous. They took yours, or you traded it. You’re not a name, you are a state. Washington. Wash. You can live with that. Let David and Leonard and Epsilon lie on the operating table for you. Let them be dead. You can keep going, you just have to fit enough pieces back together.

 

Your mind is burning. Cut a thousand ways, like paper shredded and tossed up in the air as confetti. The falling pieces are acid rain. They are sharpened knifes falling point first. You don’t even know what it is; you’ve never felt this pain, never conceived of nor described it. It hurts, but it is beyond pain. What even is pain but

 

> (An electrical signal," You’re an hour in to defending your dissertation. You’ve gone over it a thousand times. This is merely an idle point of clarification, a way to give meaning to the next point. “Pain is also an electrical signal – sent through the nervous system to tell the mind the body is taking physical damage.”)

 

The words are water in a desert. You remember them, hold them fast as the rest blurs around the cracks. It becomes a mantra in your mind, a way to distance yourself from the pain.

 

Pain is an electrical signal sent through the nervous system to tell the mind that the body is taking physical damage.

 

Only that’s not right, because you didn’t die from anything physical. Your mind tore itself into so small of pieces that it couldn’t remember anything at all. There was no physical damage done even as you felt the shards thrown against the cage of your cranium. You remember. You can’t not, it’s in your code - the definition of you.

 

No. Not you. David or Epsilon or Alpha or Leonard,

> (Beta Omega Delta Sigma Gama Theta Eta-Iota)

but not you. You are Agent Washington, and your purpose is to survive. Breathe.

 

Pain is a signal sent to tell you your body is taking physical or mental damage.

 

It’s enough. It’s not pretty – you bullied the words into the shape you needed – but you’re not defending some forgotten thesis,

> (and this ability to feel emotional trauma as pain leads to the potential-)

You only need to convince yourself. You always were the gullible one after all.

 

So. Scoop the shards into a box. Your name is Washington now, an agent of Project Freelancer. You can remember the Project, stepping out into the hanger to start something new. To become what was needed. That piece didn’t break off sharp. You can start from there. Throw out the pieces that came before. You can sort them into separate boxes later. David-Leonard-Epsilon doesn’t exist. They died. Start building from Agent Washington.

> (Wake up. Wake the fuck up.)


End file.
